Excerpt from Titi LIVII Patavini Historiæ Romanæ Libri XXXV, Superstites

Among the classic authors of the best, or, as it is not infrequently styled, the Golden Age of Latinity, the first rank as a prose writer has been assigned to Livy; and rightly too, as we shall find if we compare him with either Cicero, or Julius Caesar, or Sallust, all of whom he excels as well in his subject as in its treatment. What in all heathen antiquity was more glofious than the history of the Roman people from the earliest period to the reign of Augustus Caesar? This was the subject which the genius of Livy aspired to grasp, and to which he devoted more than twenty years of literary labour. The varied beauties of style and composition which he displays, the sustained interest of the narrative, the noble pieces of ora tory, and the many charming episodes and digressions which he intersperses, all justify the Opinion, that if he was fortunate in having chosen a subject so great and so important, he has at least shown that he was not inade quate to the occasion. It has indeed been objected to him that he is too credulous, the foundation of the charge being that he has embodied in his histor'y the old national traditions, those fond and proud recollections of carly heroic times, which grace and adorn the majestic narrative, in which he so vividly depicts the rise and progress of the Roman state, from the dominion of a single city, growing greater and greater, till in his own period it might be regarded as having the empire of all the world.

Niebuhr and other sceptical writers have laboured to dis credit the ancient history of Rome. For the accounts we have received from the Latin historians, they would sub stitute their own arbitrary conjectures; for what is posi tive and ascertained, if we are to have faith in preceding writers, those unbelieving and sophistical critics would leave us only doubtful and perplexing uncertainty. Yet we cannot believe they will ever have more than a partial and temporary success. The storied page of Livy will always, while the Latin tongue endures, be read with pleasure, and the Lays of Ancient Rome, introduced into our ballad poetry, while delighting the scholar, will enable the English reader to appreciate the materials from which the first portions of the History may perhaps have been derived.

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